Anne Janzer

Author

Daniel Pink

Books for Writers: When by Daniel Pink

 

The Short Version

Daniel Pink’s latest book, When: The Scientific Secrets to Perfect Timing, may help you be more productive as a writer.

This is yet another in a series of reviews of Books for Writers – books that are not, ostensibly, about writing, yet offer important insights into the practice or craft. 

The Longer Version

I always enjoy reading Daniel Pink’s book, and his latest may be my favorite so far: When: The Scientific Secrets to Perfect Timing.

As is his habit, Daniel Pink turns extensive research into intelligible, enjoyable prose and actionable insights. He makes it look easy.

As a choral singer, I relish the insight into the joys of synchronizing with others. As a chocolate lover, I vow to embrace the advice about treating each piece of chocolate as my last.

But let’s stay on-topic here – this review highlights a few insights that the book offers for writers about:

  • When to write
  • How to get through long projects
  • How to craft a satisfying ending

When to Write

One of the first thing that comes up in any discussion of writing process is timing. Successful authors tend to have their own preferred schedules, such as waking before dawn, or working through the night. Some have steady, office-like hours, working from 9 until 2, with a break for lunch, then reading in the afternoon.

(Read Sarah Stodola’s book Process for a fascinating recap of famous authors’ habits.)

If you adopt someone else’s writing schedule, it may not work for you. Here’s why:

Our body clocks are different. The person who can rise at 5am is clearly a different animal than the one who waits until 1am to start work.

The lark and the owl metaphor turns out to be a real attribute of human biology.

Each of us has patterns (our chronotype) that influences our mental acuity, mood, and energy during the day. Pink writes, “Our cognitive abilities do not remain static over the course of a day. During the sixteen or so hours we’re awake, they change-often in a regular, foreseeable manner.”

For most of us (everyone except those die-hard owls), our best analytical thinking happens in the first part of the day, until about midday. But – and here’s the interesting point – we may have more creative insight late in the day. (That rings true with my experience. The evenings often find me running into the office to jot down one more idea for the next day.)

Pay attention to your particular internal clock and personal experience and try to schedule your work accordingly.When you find yourself flagging, or working in suboptimal times of day, restorative breaks can make all the difference: a walk outside, a visit with someone, even a short nap.

Getting Through Long Projects

Beginnings and endings are critical, but we spend most of our lives in the places in between – the Long Middle. That’s particularly true for those of us writing books.

We start off with an outline, proposal, and a sense of excitement. Near the end, as the day approaches to send the manuscript to the editor, we are energized. But many books languish somewhere in the middle – we cut corners, lose steam, and stop showing up every day. Other things take over.

The book surveys multiple studies about how we react to midpoints or push toward endings. For example, being a little behind at the halftime of a game may inspire better performance. A slight sense of panic can spur motivation.

What can writers take from this?

Create multiple interim goals, so you have many endpoints to pull you forward. Acknowledge the midpoints as they arrive. Master the middle and you can win the game.

Endings

Although I love a happy ending in general, Pink makes a strong case for the power of poignancy, adding bittersweet to the resolution, and focusing on insight rather than storybook success.

“The best endings don’t leave us happy. Instead, they product something richer—a rush of unexpected insight, a fleeting moment of transcendence, the possibility that by discarding what we wanted we’ve gotten what we need.”

And I’ll leave you with his last comment about endings: “In the end, we seek meaning.”

If mastering my timing can give my writing a boost, I’m all in. That’s why When earns a place in my Books for Writers list.

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Move the Starting Line

startline Ryan McGuire

Are you a careful planner? Do you like to know your exact daily itinerary before you take a trip or do you leave yourself open to exploration and discovery?

In writing as in travel, you  may not discover exactly where you’re going until you’re well on the way. If you wait to figure out the entire course, you may never get started.

The Paradox of Planning

You may hesitate to set out on a large project like a book without knowing exactly what you have to say. Fair enough.

Here’s the paradox: until you start working with and exploring a topic, you might never figure out your unique angle on a subject. It’s a dilemma.

What would happen if you moved the starting line?

The inner work of writing doesn’t start when you set down to compose the draft. The writing process begins much earlier, when you dedicate time to research, deep thought, and freewriting.

The work of writing begins with exploration and struggle.

You can be hard at work on your book long before you compose a word of the draft.

In an episode of The Writer Files podcast last year, bestselling author Daniel Pink reported that he prepares several book proposals, then determines which one to develop into a book.

Does he cease to be a writer while he’s thinking? No. I enjoy Dan Pink’s books because of the research and thought that happens before the writing. And if ideas and thoughts are discarded or set aside along the way, it’s a small price to pay for the excellence of the results.

The most important work of writing may be the process of exploration and discovery, and that cannot begin until you commit to the work.

Starting Now….

Start writing your book, story or manifesto this year, this month, this week. Today, even.

  • Create a plan, a schedule, and set aside the time.
  • Allocate and commit time to reading or researching.
  • Talk to or interview people about your topic.
  • Use freewriting to explore what you already know and what you think.
  • Do market research about other books on the subject area you want to explore
  • Having done some researching, spend time brainstorming topics and angles that interest you.

These are all part of the writing process. You don’t have to know your exact angle and topic before you start the effort.

Try 750-1000 Words a Day

I write many thousands of words that never see the light of day. Freewriting is a critical part of my process.

Here’s my favorite technique for starting a book. See if it works for your project.

Commit: Commit to writing a certain number of words a day for a fixed period of time. You might decide to write 1000 words a day for 10 days, or 750 words a day for three weeks.

Choose a smaller number, such as 750 words, if writing doesn’t come fluidly to you. Select a number large enough that you quickly use up the easy, obvious ideas, and challenge your mind (your Muse) to find more connections.

(The site 750words.com is a useful way to approach this – it tracks the word count for each day as well as how many consecutive days you manage 750 words.)

Freewrite: Every day, write your words, even when you’re busy or have other things going on. You don’t have to write about topics in any order. Simply explore the thoughts that come into your mind about the subject.

Write without the inner critic. Repeat yourself, ramble, skip around, making typing mistakes. It doesn’t matter – no one will ever see what you write here.

At some point, you may struggle to put ideas down. You’ll barely meet the goal and wonder how you can possible come up with more words for the next day. That’s a good sign – you’ll set your background mental processes to work on the project. It’s part of the process.

Evaluate: When you reach the end of your committed time period, you’ll have a rich source file of thousands of words on your subject area. Read through the file, rearrange the entries. Come up with an outline or angle from what you’ve explored, and return to the file to find ideas when drafting.

You may find that you keep adding to this source file if you discover the usefulness of freewriting as an “inner research” tool.

So, now what’s keeping you from starting on that book, essay or blog post you want to write?

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Find Your Writing North Star(s)

Stars Greg RakozyWhen I set out to write my first book, I started researching everything from writing to publishing to marketing books.

The effort nearly derailed me altogether.

There are more writing and book marketing podcasts than you have time to listen to. You cannot read every book, nor follow every blog and watch every video. If you try to absorb it all, you’ll never get any writing done.

Worse,  you’ll hear conflicting advice. Do you want to publish a book as a “fat business card?” Are you writing something creative, from the heart? Do you plan to get rich quickly from a book?

One book about author marketing left such a bad taste in my mouth that I almost abandoned the effort.

There’s only one way to cut through this noise and keep your sanity: find your own north star, then follow it.

Choose a Direction

Polaris, or the North Star, is very close to the north celestial pole. For those of us in the northern hemisphere, it’s a handy nighttime compass, pointing the way north in a sky filled with constellations.

When facing writing conundrums and conflicting advice, find those authors who best embody the kind of writer you want to be. Turn them into your personal north stars.

What living author or authors do you admire today? It doesn’t matter how far they seem from your abilities; the fact that they speak to you is what matters.

If you wanted to model your writing career on one author, particularly a writer who works in your genre, who would you choose? Perhaps you’ll have a short list.

Having identified these authors, use them as your inner guides:

“Would Malcolm Gladwell use this cheesy marketing tactic?”

“Would Elizabeth Kolbert take this extra step in research?” 

“Would Daniel Pink skip this editing cycle?”

For publishing and marketing decisions, choose authors who are living and publishing today. It’s difficult to know what William Shakespeare would think about publishing on a Kindle. (I imagine he’d be all over the audiobook trend.)

For living authors, you can visit often their websites, subscribe to their emails lists, and see how they publish and promote their books.

Construct A Constellation

In practice, finding the north star among the nighttime sky may be tricky. That’s where constellations come in handy. In the northern hemisphere, the handle of the Big Dipper includes the North Star. In the southern hemisphere, navigators use the Southern Cross (Crux) to oriented themselves to the South Pole.

Build a constellation of people that you follow and refer to, to guide you on the path that makes the most sense for you.

You won’t become your stars, just as I won’t become Malcolm Gladwell, Elizabeth Kolbert or Daniel Pink. But their examples can shape your efforts and give you strength in making difficult decisions. Having a constellation guides you in deciding which advice to ignore and how to travel your own path.

(My apologies to Malcolm Gladwell, Daniel Pink, and Elizabeth Kolbert for hijacking them as inner muses.)

Who are your personal north stars?

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Image by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash